


Steadfast

by th_esaurus



Category: Actor RPF, Call Me By Your Name (2017) RPF
Genre: M/M, Open Relationships, Rope Bondage, Rough Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-20
Updated: 2017-08-20
Packaged: 2018-12-17 19:59:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11858631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/th_esaurus/pseuds/th_esaurus
Summary: Knot thing???





	Steadfast

**Author's Note:**

> GODDDDDDD I'M SORRY

He’s about fifteen minutes into an innocuously pleasant call with Elizabeth - Timothée’s recommending her this amazing jazz LP he picked up in the Bronx, and she’s been bugging him for his mother’s email address to send her an absolutely darling coffee cake recipe she’s tinkered around with - when the subject turns, as it always does, to their mutual friend, and suddenly she’s saying: “And then he started talking about how he wants to tie you up and did I think that would be okay, and bless his heart that he still thinks he needs my permission, but--”

“Wait,” Timothée says. “What?”

“You know how sweet he is when he’s flustered. He thinks,” she says, in a stage-whisper, “You’ll make fun of him for it.”

“For what? Back up--he wants to what?”

“Tie you up,” Elizabeth says, like she’s giving him the time. “In bed. You know, because of his knot thing.”

Timothée purses his lips and swallows. “You keep saying _I know_ but I don’t know if I know, y’know?”

Elizabeth, for the first time, pauses. “Oh, boy,” she says, clearly delighted. And then she proceeds to not mention it again for the entire rest of their conversation.

He texts Armie as soon as she hangs up.

_Knot thing???_

It takes him all of four minutes to reply, even though he’s filming in London and it must be ass o’clock over there right now.

 _oh my god_ , Armie says.

And then: _i’m gonna kill her._

See, Timothée already knows Armie’s tastes in the sack are kind of--weird. Maybe that’s too harsh; he’s particular. “I know what I like,” is how he describes it, a little defensively. Timothée has never really thought about sex beyond what he considers the basics: mouths, missionary and masturbation. He likes sex, sure, but he liked to work, and one left little time for the other.

Then he started fucking around with Armie; like, actually fucking, not just-for-the-movies fucking, where they curl up on Armie’s crisp, white, 1000-thread count sheets and Armie’s dick actually gets inside Timothée and everyone involved comes. It’s a pretty good time all round. Armie even has the grace to be endearingly nervous, after, as if he somehow doesn’t tick all the boxes. Handsome. Talented. Charming. Nice. _Jeez_. “Was it okay? Is this okay?” he murmurs, and Timothée just nuzzles into his neck and wraps his skinny arms around Armie’s chest and hums against his throat.

It’s okay.

And then, after they’ve done _that_ a few times, Armie takes Timothée out to this classy, over-priced steakhouse and sits them in the corner-most booth, which is shadowy but not invisible, and holds both Timothée’s hands on top of the table, and says in a very fast, low voice, “Look, okay, I really like you, like a lot, and when I like people sometimes I want to, kind of, hurt them, a little bit, but in a sexy way, right, I want to hurt you--sexually? Is that--am I making any sense?”

“Not much,” Timothée says.

“I mean, can I pull your hair when we fuck?” Armie whispers very urgently, leaning forward.

“Sure,” Timothée shrugs.

“Can I call you bad things?”

Timothée thinks about it, and he’s not so far out of drama school that name-calling doesn’t feel like bullying. “Maybe not,” he says.

Armie looks--relieved at this refusal. Like he’s glad Timothée has the compunction to say no.

Quickly, he brings Timothée’s knuckles to his mouth and kisses them, and then lets him go, and they eat steak and talk about bad wine experiences and drive home a little over the limit; and then Armie fucks Timothée standing up, against the kitchen island, grabbing onto a handful of his hair like he’s reining in a bronco, whispering tender endearments in a cigarette-smoke voice, hoarse and hot. The slap of their skin connecting every time Armie thrusts in is obscene.

Armie comes uncharacteristically fast, his fist twisting in Timothée’s hair and his groan reverberating down Timothée’s spine, Armie’s mouth too hot on his neck. “You fucking teenager,” Timothée laughs, breathless.

But then Armie pulls out and gets on his knees and gives Timothée’s dick just the sweetest TLC it’s ever been bestowed. Just straight up worships Timothée with his mouth, soft and wet and slow as hell, up to the brink and back again twice before he draws Timothée’s orgasm clean out of him.

“I take it back,” Timothée says, panting. They end up curled around each other on the tiled floor, breathing hard.

“Thank you,” Armie says, and Timothée doesn’t think it’s gratitude for retracting his petty insult. “Thank you, fuck, thank you.”

Timothée, actually, has spoken to Elizabeth about this particular development, because there’s a period of time where he isn’t actually sure how much he’s meant to disclose to her about what he and Armie get up to. So he tells her about the hair-pulling, awkwardly shy, over the phone, and can practically feel the vibration of her rolling eyes as she says dryly, “Yeah, that sounds like my husband.”

So, anyway, that’s how Armie rolls.

And he’s filming in London with Ben and Alicia so it’s not like anything’s going to happen any time soon, Timothée thinks, but Armie has never been lazy about travelling. So when he rocks up at Timothée’s Manhattan apartment, mid-June, overnight bag in tow and enough Shake Shack take-out for four people, Timothée can’t justify being shocked. He is, and pleased, deep down, but he shouldn’t be.

“Couple days off,” Armie grins. “I called your agent to see if you were home.”

“You could’ve called me.”

“And risk the element of surprise? Here,” Armie says, holding out the crinkled paper bag as he strides in, toes off his shoes and starts peeling off his socks with one hand, “Eat while it’s hot. You’ll need some energy.”

“Oh,” Timothée says. “--Oh.”

“ _Oh_ ,” Armie mimics, but there’s a flush behind his grin.

There is, although Timothée doesn’t know it yet, a spare tee, toothbrush and clean boxers in Armie’s carry-on bag, along with a 30-foot length of pristine coiled hemp rope.

But, you know, they lounge around on the sofa for half an hour dripping burger sauce down their chins before that’s brought into the fray.

(“How the heck did you get this on a plane?” Timothée asks later, and Armie shrugs, honestly. “Because I’m white,” he says, “and I have really nice teeth.”)

Armie feels huge in Timothée’s crowded apartment. It’s New York, so it’s small and dim, and Armie’s height works best in the rolling hills of Italy or the endless Texan sky. He fights with the high-rises out here in the city. He seems to take up three quarters of Timothée’s poky one-bed anywhere he stands. Timothée has piles of books and DVDs instead of coffee tables, and Armie, amused, arranges an armful of Taschen hardbacks under his bare ankles to use as a footstool while they eat. His walls are mainly bare, rental beige, a few clusters of postcards and polaroids tacked up around the little hallway between the kitchenette and the bedroom, but he has, indulgently, a framed and signed Knicks jersey on the wall.

His lamps are all low wattage, and when Armie grins at his messy mouth, he brightens the place up ten-fold. “You child,” he says, and holds Timothée by the chin, and licks mayo off his bottom lip.

Jesus but Timothée likes spending time with Armie. Weird sex stuff notwithstanding. He’s hooked on the guy.

Still--Timothée freaks out a little bit when Armie shows him the rope, just like, on the inside. Mainly because it’s really long and Armie is treating it like some kind of exotic reptile, with care and reverence. He must have a nervy rictus smile on his face because Armie takes one glance at him and balks.

“We don’t--seriously, I’m not gonna _make_ you do this,” he says, chagrined.

“I am curious,” Timothée admits. “And you want it. And I kinda like you, so.”

“God,” Armie breathes, and he shifts up close to Timothée on the sofa, bundles him up in his arms and presses his nose into Timothée’s hair. “You know I’m fucking crazy about you, don’t you? When we were in Crema I was going home every night and--fuck,” he swallows, embarrassed, but he’s always powered through that particular emotion, “Just like, frantically practicising my Somersville Bowline on the bedsheets.” He laughs at himself, and it’s a warm breath melting across Timothée’s head. “Masturbating would’ve been easier, right?”

“Right,” Timothée huffs. He had, himself, jerked off an inordinate amount during filming. What else was he supposed to do after rolling around in bed all day with Armie?

Armie presses a soft kiss on his temple, and then one on the bridge of his nose, and then his jaw, on the left side, and then his mouth. He can be so unbearably tender.

“You wanna finish these fries and fuck around?” Armie asks, smiling.

“I want you to tie me up,” Timothée shrugs.

“Really for real?”

“For real,” Timothée says, and leans in for a sharp, pointed kiss. He means it as emphasis, but Armie grabs his shoulders and keeps him there and slows it down, languid tonguing between open mouths.

“You’re an asshole,” Timothée grins.

“Off,” Armie says blithely, tugging at his ratty t-shirt. “Off, off, off.”

They mess around a little once they’re naked; how could they not? Even on set they were feisty. Timothée’s bedroom is just as haphazard as the rest of the apartment, and Armie deftly toes a couple of paperbacks off the pillow; can’t let them lie; finds a place for them on an old thrift-store dresser.

“You _still_ didn’t get a bedstand?” he teases.

It’s not like Timothée can’t afford a bedstand. He just--likes the look of a dishevelled mattress on the floor. It’s kind of cool; kind of Skandi.

“You terrible hipster,” Armie says, awfully fond.

Timothée’s not yet amazing at blowing Armie, because, listen, his dick is kind of unwieldy; but he’s learning, muscle memory and determination, and he’s not shy about lathing up the underside with his tongue, drawing along the vein. It makes Armie groan that earthy noise of his, like it’s effort for him not to just scruff Timothée right there and force his open mouth down.

“One day,” he says, husky, “I’m gonna come on your mouth.” And then, tempering himself: “I mean, if that’s okay.”

“We’ll see,” Timothée hums happily, and puts his lips around the head of Armie’s dick, and sucks.

“Stop, stop, stop,” Armie gasps, and he does grab Timothée’s hair this time. “Or I’ll--I wanna--save it,” he says, his grip loosening at once. His fingers card through Timothée’s hair, and he seems almost shaky. That boundless confidence all at once fragile in the face of something new.

Timothée smiles, dreamily, his lips slick. “Okay,” he says simply.

“Okay?”

Timothée nods. “Okay.”

Armie kisses him, helpless against it. “Okay, I’m gonna--just wait here, I’ll get the--thing--” and he bounds off, butt naked, to fetch his bit of rope.

In truth, Timothée wonders if the bedstand comment wasn’t, on some level, practical. He has a mental image of bondage, and it’s pale wrists roped to a brass bedstead, black cloth blindfolds, maybe a ballgag if he’s feeling adventurous. The thought makes a bubble of laughter catch in his chest. But when Armie lopes back, all he does is carefully put the rope aside, poke Timothée upright, lightly smack the small of his back so he’s sitting up straight, crosslegged, in the middle of the mattress.

Then he crouches down across from him and examines him, frowning.

Timothée doesn’t mind being looked at - he’d be a poor actor if he did - and he knows what parts of his body Armie likes: his neck, especially, the pale expanse of it, and his long fingers, and his shaggy hair. So he tilts his head up for a better view, feeling a little like a model about to be sketched. He gets the sense that Armie is looking at the parts of him rather than the sum, trying to figure him out like a pleasant puzzle.

There’s a low, warm tingling feeling in Timothée’s gut. Armie has told him, many times, repeatedly, that he’s pretty crazy about Timothée. He’s heard second-hand from Elizabeth that Armie waxes breathlessly about how lucky he feels to have met him. Usually he shrugs, waves it off, says something non-committal like the sentiment’s mutual.

But holed up like this, safe in Timothée’s apartment, naked and squared off against each other, it feels very abruptly real. That they’re doing this. And probably will for a long time to come.

“Alright,” Armie murmurs. “I got it.”

“Alright,” Timothée echoes softly.

They take it slow. The rope is surprisingly smooth, not scratchy or frayed at all, and Armie seems to ask every ten seconds: “Not too tight?” or “That okay?”

Timothée just nods.

Armie’s nervous and brisk at the start, and it doesn’t suit him. He’s working mostly from the back, looping the rope just above Timothée’s elbows, taut against his back. He’s gotta perch up on his knees so his hands don’t curl on the floor by his feet, but this murmured focus is killing him: he needs to make Armie laugh.

“You know,” he says, his mouth dry, “I thought you’d bring like, some silk-lined case with handcuffs and a feather tickler. Cuff me to the radiator and go to town.”

Armie snorts, loudly. “That Fifty Shades bullshit. This is an art form, dude.”

“Tell me?”

So Armie kisses the nape of his neck and wraps the rope around itself between his bound arms and tells him. Tells him about this pervy Japanese dude who saw the military tying people up for torture or whatever and though, yeah, that’s hot shit, I could get off on that. Tells him about dragging Elizabeth to Toubaku a couple years back for the best goddamn suspension display he’d ever seen in his life. Tells him that there’s all this bullshit around whether they’re supposed to call it _shibari_ or _kinbaku_ but what does it really matter if it looks good and feels better?

“Wow,” Timothée says mildly, floored by how genuinely fascinated he is. “Your Japanese accent is terrible.”

“And your French accent sounds fake,” Armie parries back. He’s playful now, more than in the mood. He shuffles Timothée around and loops the rope across his chest, and tells him, “If you were a girl - if you had tits, I mean - this would really be floating my boat right about now. You know, when I do this with Liz--”

“ _Elizabeth_ lets you tie her up?”

“She does it to me,” Armie says, completely serious. “I’m teaching her the knots.” And then, almost thoughtfully: “Timmy, have you ever been pegged by a girl?”

He’s thinking of Elizabeth, and his dick, traitorously, twitches. “I mean. You’ve been right up in my ass, so.”

Armie scoffs. “Not the same, dude.” He has a sparkle in his eye when he says, “I’ll mention it to Liz sometime.”

And then he distracts himself doing something complicated between Timothée’s shoulderblades. “I fucking love knots,” Armie says, weirdly proud.

“I’m getting the picture.”

Timothée hasn’t been hard for any of this - curiously calm rather than particularly horny. Every now and then Armie’s palm will brush his dick, almost checking in politely, but it seems almost secondary. The sliding shift of the rope, Armie’s deep, lulling voice, the closeness of their bodies--it’s nice. It’s, you know, a good time, erection or no. But then--

Then Armie loops something through the harness around his shoulders and neck, and pulls it, taut. It makes Timothée’s back straighten where he’d slumped, pulls his shoulderblades in towards his spine, and really makes him feel, for the first time--bound.

Blood seems to rush to his belly, and lower.

“Too tight?”

“You can--go a little more, if you want,” Timothée says, his voice reedy.

“Oh, is that how it is?” Armie grins, and tugs down just an inch more, and ties the loose end off. Oddly, he lets out a shaky exhale, his nose buried for just a second in Timothée’s long hair. As though he’s somehow been braced this whole time.

Then, once he’s calm, Armie scoots back to his viewing post, and spends a long, long time just looking.

“So,” Timothée says.

“So,” Armie repeats. “What do you wanna do?”

“What?”

Armie shrugs. “I mean, I could untie you, if you want. Or we can make out. Or we can fuck. Whatever you wanna do.”

In truth, Timothée hadn’t expected this reprieve. He’d expected Armie to push him onto his belly and fuck him hard. Maybe the inherent violence of seeing him bound is enough to sate that particular fervour. “What do you want?”

“Honestly?” Armie says, sweetly embarrassed. “I could just stare at you like this for hours. You don’t have any idea how perfect you look.”

He sounds brutally honest, and dangerously open. His eyes, Timothée just about notices in the low light, are shimmery and wet. Like he can’t quite believe what he’s seeing. Timothée tries to picture it: his pale, skinny body trussed up by his skilled hand, sitting patient and obedient, safely dissected, the rope just beginning to cut into his stringy muscle. It doesn’t seem particularly visionary to him.

But then he flips it around and imagines Armie in his place. His long legs folded under him, his upright torso, chest hair curling around the thin rope. Held still and steadfast. What if the rope was white against the California tan of his skin? What if it were a little tight around his neck, under his Adam’s apple?

What then?

That’d be a sight.

And Timothée maybe gets it, just a little bit.

“I want you to fuck me,” Timothée tells him; the honest truth. He’s wanted it all night, horny or not. He always wants it, if it’s what Armie wants.

“Yes,” Armie breathes, surging towards him. “Yes. Can do.”

*

Armie kisses Timothée’s bruised lips on the doorstep of his apartment, and flies out to London the next morning. Within twenty-four hours, Elizabeth is on the phone.

“So!” she says, both bright and conspiratorial. “How did it go?”

“Come on, I bet Armie’s told you everything.”

“Of course,” she says, like that’s meaningless. “But I want to hear it from you.”

 _Well_ , Timothée thinks blithely, _this is how life goes now, I guess_ ; and takes a deep breath, and tells her.


End file.
